85 



On the other hand, if a man is working for a special or 

 personal market, — that is, if he is supplying regular cus- 

 tomers, either directly or through some retail fruit dealer, — 

 then it is perfectly legitimate for him to grow a much longer 

 list of varieties ; in fact, it is necessary for him to do so, for 

 he does not want to drum up trade for his Wealthies and 

 lose it when Hubbardstons are in season, only to work it up 

 again for his fancy Baldwins or his Spies. He wants a suc- 

 cession of varieties, from the eairliest to the latest, and for 

 this purpose he wants from six to a dozen varieties. This 

 is the type of trade which we hope to capture, and we are 

 therefore setting a fairly long list of varieties. 



Another question, to which we have devoted a good deal 

 of thought and some experimenting, is the matter of cover 

 crops. It is, of course, out of the question for us to use 

 barn manure for our trees, and we do not wish to continue 

 buying nitrate of soda any longer than is necessary, so it 

 is imperative that we get a rank-growing, nitrogen-gathering 

 crop, to supply us with humus and nitrogen. We used this 

 year cow peas, soy beans, summer vetch and buckwheat. Of 

 course, this last does not add nitrogen, but otherwise is an 

 excellent cover crop, and one of the best for raw lands such 

 as ours. J^one of these did very well for us this season ex- 

 cept the buckwheat, but from experience in the college or- 

 chard we expect the soy beans to be one of our " stand-bys " 

 when we get our land in better shape, and we shall give the 

 others further trial. We shall try next year, also, the com- 

 mon " pea bean " as a cover crop. We used it the past 

 season to grow as a crop between the rows, and it made a 

 splendid growth, and would have supplied a large amount 

 of humus and nitrogen had we plowed the crop under. Of 

 course, it was sown early, in drills, and cultivated for some 

 time before the orchard was " laid by," and I believe that 

 many cover crops should be handled in this way to get the 

 best results. 



Still another vexed question which we had to decide, and 

 which we perhaps decided differently from what many of 

 my hearers would, was the question of the distance apart for 



